“Killers of the Flower Moon” star Lily Gladstone paid tribute to the Blackfeet Nation after her win at Sunday’s Golden Globes by delivering part of her acceptance speech for best performance by an actress in a motion picture — drama in Blackfeet.
“I’m so grateful that I can speak even a little bit of my language, which I’m not fluent in, up here because in this business, Native actors used to speak their lines in English and then the sound mixers would run them backwards to accomplish Native languages on camera,” Gladstone said.
She called her win historic, and said it didn’t “belong to just me.”
Gladstone, who grew up on the reservation of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana, said her win was for “every little rez kid, every little urban kid, every little Native kid who has a dream, who is seeing themselves represented and our stories told by ourselves in our own words with tremendous allies and tremendous trust with and from each other.”
This was Gladstone’s first nomination and first win, according to the Golden Globes.
ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images
Gladstone played Mollie Burkhart, an Osage woman who lived through the Osage murders in the early 1900s, in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” adapted from David Grann’s bestselling book of the same name.
Gladstone won Sunday’s award over Carey Mulligan, Sandra Hüller, Annette Bening, Greta Lee and Cailee Spaeny.
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who also starred in the movie, wore a pin with the symbol of the Osage Nation to the award show.
“She brought so much to, not only her character, but to the entire film,” DiCaprio previously said. “She was an amazing partner to have.”
During her speech Sunday, Gladstone thanked Principal Chief of the Osage Nation Geoffrey M. Standing Bear. Chief Standing Bear previously spoke with CBS’ “Sunday Morning” about the risks of letting Hollywood in.
“Native Americans have always had someone else tell the story about us, but we wanted to tell our story,” he said.
